Maneuverability vs Speed

RCAFson said:

USN aircraft non-combat losses at Philippine Sea 20 June 1944.

The losses were mainly due to the need for excessive loiter during night recovery of aircraft and the lack of practise in night carrier landing. Very few aircraft (~10) ran out of fuel prior to reaching the vicinity of the USN carriers.:



The relatively small Dauntless losses were due to several factors, but mainly from the fact that VB-10 was the last to leave their carrier and spent the least time airborne:



3 of the 35 dive bombers lost due to non-combat reasons were SBDs (29 SBDs participated in the attack), two from fuel starvation and one from a landing accident.

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Excellent post, thanks RCAFson. Makes it very clear what a harsh, and screwed up event that was.

Reluctant Poster said:

Ther wer only 2 Judys at Midway. Do you mean Kates

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In one of the threads we had a member posted up losses sustained by the IJN during some of the major pacific engagements, I'm not sure which thread it was but the attacking forces were brutalised on numerous occasions with unsustainable loss of aircraft and crews, not just during the battles but lost on the way back after receiving battle damage.

GregP said:

I have been guilty of similar posts in the past. I didn't really intend for them to read quite so hostile but, upon re-reading them the next morning, they DID come off pretty hostile

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One thing that needs to be remembered is what we write and what me mean are two different things, I bet if we were all standing around a BBQ full of steaks and an esky full of beer, Australian beer, not that watery rubbish you guys drink we would all be chatting away like best mates.

PAT303 said:

One thing that needs to be remembered is what we write and what me mean are two different things, I bet if we were all standing around a BBQ full of steaks and an esky full of beer, Australian beer, not that watery rubbish you guys drink we would all be chatting away like best mates.

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Sign me up!

GregP said:

True, but what percent of the total Japanese aircraft and Naval aircraft were on those carriers?

Not very much.

It was more of a blow to lose the pilots, I'd think, just because they weren't getting very many through training as replacements. And the ones they got weren't getting much in the way of lead-in combat fighter/bomber training. They were thrown into the war fresh out of flight school.

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The Japanese lost relatively few aircrew at Midway compared to, say, Santa Cruz. Also, most of the airplanes were indeed aboard Akagi, Kaga, and Soryu, as they had recovered and had been trying to refuel and rearm. I think when the fatal 10:25 strike landed, 30 Zeroes were on CAP. Hiryu's B5Ns got shot up badly over Midway and only about half were flyable later that day against Yorktown.

Parshall and Tully in Shattered Sword (p.476) report 98 Japanese "airmen" lost in the battle. With roughly 290-310 aircrew aboard each carrier, that's a fairly low ratio, precisely because 1) they were aboard already and not forced to ditch, and 2) like the Americans, the Japanese had a policy of evacuating aircrew first in order to preserve their training and experience for the fleet.

PAT303 said:

One thing that needs to be remembered is what we write and what me mean are two different things, I bet if we were all standing around a BBQ full of steaks and an esky full of beer, Australian beer, not that watery rubbish you guys drink we would all be chatting away like best mates.

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I drink good American beer, I'll have you know. Fireman's #4, Alstadt's Kolsch, and so on. There's a lot more to American beer than the mass-produced swill!

PAT303 said:

Australian beer

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Southwark Bitter ?

I still have a 5-6ft beach umbrella I brought home over 30 years ago.

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:

You and i disagree sometimes, but I don't think you are delusional or an idiot. Same with Sr6 and most others on here. I don't pretend to have a monopoly on truth, and I am very well aware I'm not the only perceptive person here, nor do I think I'm immune to mistakes. To be clear, many here are better informed than I am about many aspects of WW2 aviation, that is what makes these discussions fun. I think this forum can be a little bit cliquish and I push back against that sometimes, but most of the people here seem nice and quite well informed. We are all just a bit opinionated.

But I do have limited patience for blatant self delusion or ideologically driven distortions. That doesn't mean the person is, but sometimes their posts are, and if it goes unchallenged more people can start taking on that kind of role and the whole thing spirals into stupidity. The suggestion that the Japanese were somehow inferior on some 'meta' level is irritating to me, (because it's not factual), especially when it's been clarified but persists in the face of the evidence / data. As is the tendency by some, sometimes, to put their thumb on the scale, cherry pick data etc., is also irritating and when you detect someone with that fanatical bent, you can basically either ignore it or point out the fallacies. Usually I ignore it, but sometimes I decide to step in front of it.

I am myself an historical researcher and author (not on aviation) yes, people who write historical narratives often have an agenda and are often at least partly mistaken. But history isn't limited to personal narratives of one or two people, it also includes a lot of far more prosaic - even boring - literary data, but which is typically a little less biased. Things like invoices, bills of lading, requisitions, inventories, lawsuits, testimonials from multiple witnesses etc. This too can be distorted, in a different way, but the more data you have and from as wide a variety of sources as possible, you can start to see a clearer picture. I think it is a bit of a cliche to claim that history is inevitably distorted. We can't ever know everything with full clarity - (without a time machine). But we can actually know a lot. More than people tend to assume.

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I can guarantee you that if YOU see a fanatical bent, others in here do, too. Its whether or not we choose to pursue it.

We pursued the P-39 for 100 pages of posts and never convinced the OP that he was wrong. So, maybe we don't quite jump on these things as hard as we used to. But, really, saying someone is wrong is fine. When it gets to name calling is when the name caller usually gets some push back. The mods will usually jump in then, but people are sometimes allowed to post ideas that are just patently false.

We had a guy who was convinced that performance came from a "thrust column" that was generated by the propeller. We never could convince him that once the air had interacted with the fuselage, wings, tail, and things attached to same ... it could no longer affect the aircraft. But, we had a good time with the fairy tale stories anyway. Don't go getting yourself in that category, regardless of the posts. Tell them they're wrong, but leave off the personal attacks.

Your post above indicates you might still be ready to call people idiots. I hope you can quash that and not get the attention of the gendarmes.

Remember, despite the cancel culture on social media, people who want to call someone else inferior in here generally have freedom of speech until they don't. They usually get a warning or two to cease and desist, and then, if they can't, its adios.

Cheers, Bill. Its all good.

Thumpalumpacus said:

Santa Cruz.

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During that battle 27 aircraft attacked the Hornet in one coordinated strike, only two returned, 93% loss rate, no one will convince me that extreme range and low speed maneuverability is worth that.

How many USN aircraft and ships were lost or damaged in exchange for the 25 IJN aircraft lost.

The USN would have been quite satisfied (in an operational sense) with that level of exchange. Obviously they would have been unhappy at the loss of life (as were the Japanese), but the USN higher ups would have been quite willing to make that trade if necessary. In fact, if it took only 25 aircraft lost per Japanese aircraft carrier in existence, the US higher ups would have had an orgasm.

The IJN lost 99 out of 203 carrier aircraft (with extreme range and low speed maneuverability) available to them at Santa Cruz, or ~49%.

The USN lost 81 out of 175 carrier aircraft (with armour & SSFT) available to them at Santa Cruz, or ~46%.

If the Japanese had also succeeded in sinking the Enterprise as a result of the battle (which was quite possible) the USN would have lost ~100% of the carrier capable aircraft available at the start of the battle. Would this mean that armour and SSFT on the USN aircraft were not worth that?

The simple fact is that the IJN managed to locate the USN fleet at a range where they could have launched an attack beyond the range at which the USN could have replied (short of suicide missions). Whether you want to call it bad luck for the IJN or good luck fo the USN (or both or something else), if they had realized the situation the extreme long range of their carrier aircraft would be lauded in history.

Same for Midway. Again, whether you want to call it bad luck for the IJN or good luck fo the USN (or both or something else), Midway could just have easily been a disaster for the USN, with Japan getting off relatively lightly, due to the extreme long range capability of their aircraft.

At both Midway and Santa Cruz, the extreme longer range of the IJN aircraft (vs the armour and SSFT of the USN aircraft) had very little to do with the outcome of the battle. How much it had to do with the loss of life to the aircrews is debatable.

Oh boy are we getting a slightly wider discussion that the original question set the parameters for. I guess that is a good thing,, and I wish to throw in a couple more things to consider.

The speed vs maneuverability is not only a question of conscious choices, but also culture/inclination. At the risk of generalizing, I'll observe that Japan to a wider extent was a warrior culture that had a romantic view of war, all about getting close and personal and outsmarting your enemy. While the need for speed certainly have an irrational element to it also, it is more to do with raw power and muscular performance. Of all the axis powers Japan fits in the romantic category, how exactly Germany is seen here is perhaps questionable. The nazi ideology certainly idealized war.

The allied camp was at the other end of the spectrum, mostly (if not uniformly) viewing war as a nessessary evil and a thing to be controlled and quantified. Perhaps the extreme is stalin (in as far as the USSR counts as allied), with his remarks about war of motors and quantity having a quality all by its own. Though the forum abounds with examples of it not being all together easy to point to the speediest, it is easier than agreeing on what, or how much, maneuverability is.

In my generalized view the axis lagged behind in horsepower for most of the war. Sometimes maybe not at all, but more often significantly so. There are several explanations for this (and not the same ones for each axis power), it was not something they chose. Ironically, here the USSR for all Stalins bluster is closer to the axis side.

When faced with combat there are several tools in the box that can give you that little extra you need to just survive or even kill your enemy. We alreaydy have speed and maneuverability, but there is also visibility, rate of climb, accelleratin, passive defensive measures, firepower and range. This has to some extent been commented on already. Being faced with a problem of limitid relative power output (and this was not always realized but merely a function of what you had available to fulfill the allotted specification), a lighter aircraft could get not only mora agility (vertical and horizontal), but also range and accelleration (in the horizontal). This meant also less fire power and less protection, but whre the breaking point is can be an open question which in different contexts can have different answers.

One thing I would like to point out is the Hurricanes inferior speed in the BOB, though the Hurricane get a lot of criticism, nobody seem to think it was not adequate on that occasion.

But to return to the romantic angle, air combat (at least fighter to fighter) clearly has a strong hold also on our modern minds too. No wonder, it is an exiting topic. But for all the combat and all the losses, most of the time in the air was spent being tired, freezing, cramped and sometimes even bored or at least numbed from being on the alert for hours on end. And most of the combat, though we may not agree on the number, was getting shot at by an enemy you never saw coming. And in that event you really need a large margin of speed to be immune, if you have the hight even a slower plane (admittedly i don't remeber exactly how low was the early Zero's permitted dive speed) get the speed advantage on an enemy flying at any version of cruise speed, up to the point where he spots you.

That point will vary. Can he look back? How tired is he? what and how large a formation is he flying in (how many and where are the extra eyes?), do you have enough fuel and time to place yourself in the sun? is he forewarned by radar? is the enemys overall numerical superiority so large he can have more formations in the air than you, ie are you yourself being jumped?), are you attacking his bombers or other targets where you precense is expected? How many mission have you flown already today?

I will not make attempt firm conclusions, but I will hazard that the context, as the war wore on, probably favoured the heavier faster and better protected aircraft. teamwork also defeats individual agility, and that raises by a factor as your team gets bigger and better trained. The nimbler planes may have held at least their own had they kept a numerical advantage, or had all combat been one on one.

The Ki-84 may be an example that agilty need not come solely at the expense of speed, but also from choise of what technology to implement, as butterfly flaps. (yes i know the thunderbolt could have had those too, but that was a matter of choice, anyway that particular poster seem to have left the discussion). At least on paper its engine was initially competitive, though in 45 it seems to have been beyond the curve. I don't know what upgrades were contemplated, but I doubt they were realistic. as we know the tried Homare could not realistically be expected to perform at its rated output towards the end.

In a vacuum the allied preference for heavier faster aircraft may have been better, in the context it certainly was. It would have been silly to not play to the strenghts of those big heavy engines with lots excellent fuel available. Instead of beating the Japanese at their own game. Whether the axis realistically had another choice, is another question, for one thing they would have used even more fuel. The Germans certainly got closer than the Japanese, though.

I probaly should make clear that I consider the Me-262 as the most formidable fighter in 1945. In a vacuum. As it was, it is a good example that speed alone won't always cut it outside the vacuum chamber.

ThomasP said:

The USN lost 81 out of 175 carrier aircraft (with armour & SSFT) available to them at Santa Cruz, or ~46%.

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How many of that 46% were lost trying to land at night or ditched after not being able to find the carriers in the darkness?.

The Japanese understood the speed vs maneuver concept quite well before the war with the Allies started, and understood boom & zoom tactics at least since the early-1930s (their training manuals include the tactic). They also demonstrated their understanding of boom & zoom in China in actual war (their use of the tactic in China is recorded by the Japanese, the Chinese, and the various mercenary and 'volunteer' groups).

They also understood the idea of teamwork and wingmen (again this in their training manuals), although it took slightly different form than it did later in the West.

They also understood the value of speed - one of the reasons the A6M and Ki-43 were developed was due the perceived need for aircraft that were significantly faster then their opponents at the time.

And the Japanese would quite happily have upped the speed on their aircraft if they could have in a practical manner. The lack of the higher grade aviation fuels largely prevented this. How many really fast aircraft would the US have had if they had to rely on 87 grade. You would have to give up any power settings over about CR x MAP = 130 psi.

Hey PAT303,

re "How many of that 46% were lost trying to land at night or ditched after not being able to find the carriers in the darkness?."

As far as I am aware none of the US aircraft ditched after nightfall due to being unable to find their carrier. A significant number ditched - during daytime - due to not being able to find the carriers and/or running out of fuel before they could land. (Were you thinking of the Battle of the Philippine Sea?)

"Starting at 09:30, Enterprise landed many of the damaged and fuel-depleted CAP fighters and returning scout aircraft from both carriers. However, with her flight deck full, and the second wave of incoming Japanese aircraft detected on radar at 09:30, Enterprise ceased landing operations at 10:00. Fuel-depleted aircraft then began ditching in the ocean, and the carrier's escorting destroyers rescued the aircrews."

"At 11:35, with Hornet out of action, Enterprise heavily damaged, and the Japanese assumed to have one or two undamaged carriers in the area, Kinkaid decided to withdraw Enterprise and her screening ships from the battle. Leaving Hornet behind, Kinkaid directed the carrier and her task force to retreat as soon as they were able. Between 11:39 and 13:22, Enterprise recovered 57 of the 73 airborne U.S. aircraft as she retreated. The remaining U.S. aircraft ditched in the ocean, and their aircrews were rescued by escorting warships."


How many Japanese aircraft had to ditch on the way back to their carriers? (answer: 5 ditched by Japanese records).


Unfortunately, Wiki does not list the total numbers of the US aircraft that had to ditch, or what the specific reasons were (ie out of fuel, damaged too badly to be safe to land, no more space on the carrier, etc) for either the US or the Japanese.

ThomasP said:

As far as I am aware none of the US aircraft ditched after nightfall due to being unable to find their carrier. A significant number ditched - during daytime - due to not being able to find the carriers or running out of fuel before they could land.

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Sorry I'm getting the battles mixed up, it was Santa Cruz that cost the IJN 49% torpedo aircraft losses, 39% of dive bombers and 20% of fighters.

PAT303 said:

One thing that needs to be remembered is what we write and what me mean are two different things, I bet if we were all standing around a BBQ full of steaks and an esky full of beer, Australian beer, not that watery rubbish you guys drink we would all be chatting away like best mates.

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and San Miguel have been my 'go to' when possible.

When smoking a brisket at 225F, I have to be careful that Celebrator not in the cooler, however - otherwise may miss the 'break and wrap'. God Bless the Oktoberfest at Munich in 1968 for introducing me.

drgondog said:

Celebrator | Ayinger Privatbrauerei

Celebrator is a Doppelbock style beer brewed by Ayinger Privatbrauerei in Aying, Germany. Score: 96 with 7,095 ratings and reviews. Last update: 11-11-2024.

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and San Miguel have been my 'go to' when possible.

When smoking a brisket at 225F, I have to be careful that Celebrator not in the cooler, however - otherwise may miss the 'break and wrap'. God Bless the Oktoberfest at Munich in 1968 for introducing me.

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One of my favorites as well. Though I haven't been able to find it locally.

ThomasP said:

And the Japanese would quite happily have upped the speed on their aircraft if they could have in a practical manner. The lack of the higher grade aviation fuels largely prevented this. How many really fast aircraft would the US have had if they had to rely on 87 grade. You would have to give up any power settings over about CR x MAP = 130 psi.

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I know that many of us use 87 grade for "low octane" or lower than 100/130 fuel but it is a lot more complicated than that.

Octane............PN
87......................68.29.....(1)
91.....................75.68......(2)
92.....................77.78......(3)
96.....................87.50......(4)
100................100.00......(5)

PN = Performance number. PN is linier, or nearly so. Octane is clearly not linier.
This is lean mixture, there are some variations as to how octane was measured in each country but not big differences.

Notes
(1) standard fuel.................except the British used and amount of aromatics and probably had a higher rich rating, they never measured it but they specified the aromatics to get a better rich response.
(2) a standard US fuel in the US in the late 30s. The US specified very low aromatics and the rich response didn't really mean higher anti-knock.
(3) Japanese fuel, rich response unknown. May depend on the base stock of the fuel and amount of aromatics but then it varies from batch to batch.
(4) Soviet fuel
(5) 1939/1940 US fuel. no rich response. 100/100. This is 'stuff' that was used in the 1940 Allisons and the early development R-2800

And it gets even more complicated. In 1939-40 Wright and P & W were offering models of the R-1820, R-2600, R-1830s that ran on the two types of fuel, 91 and 100, in some cases there was change of power of 100hp, in some cases the 100 octane was not allowed to make any more power, but it was allowed to make the same power at a higher altitude. The engines were operating at their cooling limit. Using the higher boost allowed by the better fuel allowed for the same power several thousand ft higher, but did not allow higher boost a low altitude. For engines designed to run on 91 octane there was not a big gain. However these were commercial engines and blowing up engines with 18-24 passengers on board was not a good thing.

ThomasP said:

How many USN aircraft and ships were lost or damaged in exchange for the 25 IJN aircraft lost.

The USN would have been quite satisfied (in an operational sense) with that level of exchange. Obviously they would have been unhappy at the loss of life (as were the Japanese), but the USN higher ups would have been quite willing to make that trade if necessary. In fact, if it took only 25 aircraft lost per Japanese aircraft carrier in existence, the US higher ups would have had an orgasm.

The IJN lost 99 out of 203 carrier aircraft (with extreme range and low speed maneuverability) available to them at Santa Cruz, or ~49%.

The USN lost 81 out of 175 carrier aircraft (with armour & SSFT) available to them at Santa Cruz, or ~46%.

If the Japanese had also succeeded in sinking the Enterprise as a result of the battle (which was quite possible) the USN would have lost ~100% of the carrier capable aircraft available at the start of the battle. Would this mean that armour and SSFT on the USN aircraft were not worth that?

The simple fact is that the IJN managed to locate the USN fleet at a range where they could have launched an attack beyond the range at which the USN could have replied (short of suicide missions). Whether you want to call it bad luck for the IJN or good luck fo the USN (or both or something else), if they had realized the situation the extreme long range of their carrier aircraft would be lauded in history.

Same for Midway. Again, whether you want to call it bad luck for the IJN or good luck fo the USN (or both or something else), Midway could just have easily been a disaster for the USN, with Japan getting off relatively lightly, due to the extreme long range capability of their aircraft.

At both Midway and Santa Cruz, the extreme longer range of the IJN aircraft (vs the armour and SSFT of the USN aircraft) had very little to do with the outcome of the battle. How much it had to do with the loss of life to the aircrews is debatable.

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Yeah this is an important point in Naval Warfare. Attrition was high. From fighters, defensive fire from bombers, flak, and just from operational challenges of flying from aircraft carriers, and sometimes from the bad weather in the tropics. It's high risk. Carriers didn't fight each other too often, when they did, the priority to destroy the other carrier when possible was very high.

And range, if properly exploited, was a very big deal.

ThomasP said:

The Japanese understood the speed vs maneuver concept quite well before the war with the Allies started, and understood boom & zoom tactics at least since the early-1930s (their training manuals include the tactic). They also demonstrated their understanding of boom & zoom in China in actual war (their use of the tactic in China is recorded by the Japanese, the Chinese, and the various mercenary and 'volunteer' groups).

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A lot of people don't realize this, but "boom and zoom" was actually the tactic used in most cases by the Zero pilots in the Pacific

ThomasP said:

They also understood the idea of teamwork and wingmen (again this in their training manuals), although it took slightly different form than it did later in the West.

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Initially they were flying in threes. But they definitely used teamwork.

ThomasP said:

They also understood the value of speed - one of the reasons the A6M and Ki-43 were developed was due the perceived need for aircraft that were significantly faster then their opponents at the time.

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Agreed

ThomasP said:

And the Japanese would quite happily have upped the speed on their aircraft if they could have in a practical manner. The lack of the higher grade aviation fuels largely prevented this. How many really fast aircraft would the US have had if they had to rely on 87 grade. You would have to give up any power settings over about CR x MAP = 130 psi.

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Again, agreed. I think the deficiency we do see in later war Japanese aircraft is not down to their designs, which were clearly world class, but to their industrial capacity, which started out smaller, (they are a much smaller nation than the US lets not forget) and by the time the balance of power had clearly shifted, say 1944, they were already suffering the effects of their cities being bombed and their commercial shipping being decimated.